Found in the Rubble
by wwgost
Summary: Rude has a long wait in the ER. Ficlet. Rude/Vincent friendship, Rude/Reno irritation. Some strong language. In progress. Takes place sometime between "Afternoon Ride" and the "Downfall/Busted" pair.
1. Chapter 1

Done as a challenge on FB.

Usual disclaimers apply...don't own 'em, wish I did, make no money, lyrics property of the artist, blah blah blah.

* * *

**Found in the Rubble**

_I dreamed that the world was crumbling down  
We sat on my back porch and watched it  
I dreamed that the buildings all fell down  
We sat on my back porch and watched it-Matchbox 20, Busted_

* * *

"So you probably got a concussion, yo. And they're kinda worried 'bout that neck thing. I feel fine but man I had to take a leak like a racing cbocobo by the time they all got done with poking and prodding. That's some _shit_, yo."

Rude lay on the gurney and wondered if his partner would ever run out of oxygen, or if maybe he had gills.

"So, Tseng has some stitches and Laney took a hit on that leg. No word from the WRO. Reeve was driving shit up to his lab in Kalm since ours is fubar at the mo..."

Rude turned a little, as much as he could around a cervical collar and a pressure bandage. All precautions; there was no reason to actually believe his injuries were that serious. There was nothing like some amateur trying to bomb the building when he and Reno were trying to sneak out for the latter's smoke break. Terrorists could be so damned inconsiderate.

Of course, had they been professionals, they could have taken out the whole building, or a good portion of it, and killed hundreds of people, not just a few floors on one side and part of a stairwell.

And why couldn't Reno catch a cinder block to the head? It would shut him up.

Maybe. There was no telling. Gods knew, there was no shutting him up now. "So first they're gonna do an MRI and a CAT scan on ya. You claustophobic? 'Cause I can talk to you through those little speaker thing."

"No." Shit, that wasn't too emphatic, was it?

"Then they wanna do a spinal to look for blood in the brain fluid. Takes hours, man. Don't worry. I'll be here to keep you company." Reno slurped loudly on his iced mocha and Rude prayed for death.

Reno was just way too damn cheerful. Was there an extra brick to toss at him? How long did it take to check for a closed head injury? And why had no one ever looked inside Reno's head?

Most likely, as Rude's mother had often speculated, there was nothing in there but bats.

A cute little nurse pranced in and took off the collar. "All right sir, the scans will take about fifteen minutes each. I'm sorry we can't give you anything for the pain until later with the concussion. But after that your partner promised to sit with you for the whole lumbar puncture!"

The planet fucking hated him.

* * *

Wheeled out of radiology, the first thing he noticed was silence.

Endless, blessed silence.

Had Reno been thrown out? Was he getting a mocha refill? Had he finally succumbed to verbally induced hypoxia? Was he in jail?

Rude was briefly concerned. Reno drove him to the brink but he didn't harm on him.

Most of the time.

But the next things that filtered through his senses were the smells of leather, coffee, musk shampoo. The last smell was so fresh, so dominant, it was obvious that the gunman had gone home to shower after his own morning of picking through the rubble for Reeve.

"I relieved Reno."

"Thank you." Rude forced himself to stop sniffing like a teenage girl with a crush.

"Here. The coffee will help with the headache. It only gets worse with the puncture." Vincent smiled dryly. "Experience."

Rude sipped. It was lethally strong.

"I took the liberty of having an espresso shot added so you'd have to drink less." Rude gave a baffled look. "Get up less," he clarified.

"Never had one of these."

Vincent gave a soft snort. "Every year. With an MRI and six vials of blood. Standard Hojo package with neurological upgrade; they just want to see how badly off I am."

Rude tried to not fidget. The immobility and the pinch of the needle in his back were insanity. "Call me next time."

"You don't mind?"

Typical Valentine. He'd drop everything to be at the bedside of a friend, but couldn't comprehend why someone would do the same for him.

"What are friends for?"


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: For fun and not for profit, characters are the property of Square Enix (damn it) and song lyrics are the property of the artist and publisher.

* * *

The Edge office of the World Regenesis Organization was open for business, and fully staffed and equipped.

Meaning, of course, that Reeve Tuesti and Vincent Valentine sat crowded together in a rented office, sharing a card table. A stack of storage boxes served as a computer stand, and the printer sat on the floor.

The coffee pot, costing somewhere just upward of nine hundred gil, stood proudly in the hallway. They had to squeeze around it, but it made espresso, cappuccino, lattes, and had two insulated warming carafes.

Rebuilding the planet took priorities, after all.

"We have to get you a desk, Vince."

"An office to put it in, might be nice." He searched for a place to put his coffee mug and lacking options, placed it on the floor beside his chair. His legs were drawn up under him, awkwardly, like a shy teenager and not at all giving off the air of the hero of the Deepground affair. He chewed the end of his tablet stylus. "So what's on the agenda, Boss?"

"That sounds a little odd. You actually working for me. Are you going to take orders?"

He reached over for his coffee. "In my capacity as a security employee, yes. Which means keeping you secure. However, that means, I fear, giving a few as well."

"Well. When you get up, and this is not an order, can you get me some more coffee? Two of us trying to get around that behemoth of a coffee pot you insisted on buying..."

"We will save money in the end if we are not paying five gil a cup at Mokas." But the argument was good natured, and Vincent picked up Reeve's cup as well as his own when he went down the hall. No sooner than he left, though, the floor rocked as though with an earthquake and the walls shuddered with the following sonic boom.

Reeve stood, temporarily stunned "That…"

"Was an explosion." Vincent was out the door before him, but not by much.

So much for their peaceful morning.

* * *

ShinRa Tower, newly reconstructed, now stood empty, smoke pouring out the windows about half way up.

All anyone could say in the gray, dusty, second dawn was that it could have been much worse. The bomb had been planted by rank amateurs, taking out only one side of several floors in the middle of the building. Tseng and Elena had received minor injuries and were being treated at the Medical facility,while Reno had been on his way to a smoke break and was unharmed. Rude was on break outside the building and was not answering his phone, but no one was concerned.

No. One man was concerned, but he was paranoid, and no one was listening.

Those not hurt sat on a low stone wall just outside the block of buildings surrounding the Tower, all owned by ShinRa. "I'm sure he's fine, Vince. I know you two are friends, but really. He's a grown man, and Elena said he was taking his break early since they had a lunch meeting. Witnesses say he left the building." Reeve was smudged with dirt, dust, grease, and any number of other unidentified substances from digging through rubble, looking for both injured survivors and clues.

"Where is everyone else?"

"The injured are all at Medical, none were serious. The rest have been gathered at the Health Complex."

Vincent shook his head. "He isn't at Medical. I've already looked." Cloud gave him a speculative glance, and he answered it with a glare. He was _not _in the mood, damn it.

"You know," Cloud spoke up for the first time, "If I was going to be a real bastard, I'd blow up part of the building and get all the evacuees in one place, then blow up _that _building while no one was looking. To hell with sending a message half-ass. To really do it, you need bodies." He left unsaid, the fact that the more radical branches of AVALANCHE did exactly that.

Meanwhile, Reno looked over the remains of the bomb. "I wish someone would find him, damn it. He's better at this than I am, but I swear. This looks pro. See the way it's wired? And this is a real explosive, not something cooked up in some anarchist's garage. And the detonator isn't home made. Nothing about this looks like some crack-job just taking a swipe at us because he's anti-ShinRa. But why did a pro do such a shitty job?"

Vincent drummed his fingers nervously for a few moments, then jumped off the steps and ran down the street toward the Health Complex. The building was three floors of gyms, health food shops, restaurants, and classrooms, all geared toward keeping ShinRa's finest in their best possible shape. Reeve and Reno tailed behind him. As an afterthought, he slowed to allow them to catch up.

"We have to evacuate this building."

"Cloud was just…"

"Cloud was right. Reno, you said it yourself. It was a pro job. Something isn't right. Look, if I'm wrong I'll let you ride my ass about this forever but please, for the love of Holy, get these people out of here." He stopped at the doors of the building; his eyes held desperation, near hysteria.

Reeve was doubtful. Suddenly, through the tastefully shaded glass front wall of the complex, the lights went out. Vincent dropped his normal, stoic facade. "Gods damn it! _There's no time!_"

He watched Reeve and Reno go in, displaying official identification and shouting orders while he stood outside for a moment, on the cement by the fountain. He looked up at the wall of glass, then across to the tower.

Smoke. Dust. Destruction.

_Rude, where are you?_

He entered the building.

* * *

It was bedlam. Reeve and the desk staff were directing people out the first floor. "Reno took second. I don't know anything about third."

"We sent a manager," a small blond woman shouted over the noise.

"I'll check on it." He ran up the stairs two at a time and, opening the door, stepped smack into a familiar wall of muscle. "Where the hell have you been?"

"Weight room, till the shit went down."

"I called." The irony that he was taking Rude to task for not having a phone did not escape him, but at the moment he just did not care.

"Phone's in my locker." He shrugged and grinned, and by wordless agreement they split the third floor between them. Within seconds, it was clear; damn but they were a good team. The stairwell door opened, and Reno came through. "Done up here?"

"Yeah, now get the hell out!" Reno reached down to the door handle.

It had locked behind them. They were trapped.

* * *

"All right, so where are we going _now_?"

"The service ladder."

"The...what?"

"Though no longer technically Head of Urban Development, Reeve was a consultant on the design of this building, though not on an aesthetic level." It had always been Vincent's opinion that the Health Complex resembled nothing so much as a shit-colored ice cube. "Which means, I was privy to a good deal of it. Code requires all buildings have some means of exit should powered doors become inaccessible. Which should not have happened, the doors should have gone out in the open position."

"Sabotage?" Rude said what they were all thinking.

"Possibly, or an oversight in execution. But there were footholds, a ladder of sorts, put into the external wall of the building itself as a backup plan."

"Window's locked, yo-" Before he could finish his sentence, Vincent had punched his gauntlet through the safety glass and ripped the lock out of the frame of the window. "Never mind."

He thought he heard Rude snort behind him. "All right, you two go first. If it all goes to hell, I can jump and recover. Go!" He watched both of them shimmy down the ladder at record speed before slipping out the window himself.

Later, he could not say what alerted him. But something, somehow, changed in the feel of the building, before the concussive force of the bomb even reached the wall. Some instinct, possibly alerted by a noise outside human hearing and picked up by his demons, took over. He planted his feet on the buttressing and pushed off as hard as he could, hoping to hit grass instead of cement below him. Curling into a ball to absorb the impact, he never even saw the fire.

* * *

He sat up, his head still a little light. "Where is he?"

Reeve steadied him. "He was hit in the head by some flying debris. Pretty hard. They took him to Medical to check him out. No, no, you take it easy. Reno's with him now."

"Let me _up_, Reeve." It was his best 'I am not to be fucked with' voice. Pity, the Commissioner had heard it enough to not be impressed, and this was apparently not one of those times when the employee was giving the orders.

"In a minute. You just came sailing off the side of an exploding building. Get your breath back at least. And while you're at it, you can come up with a cover story for why you tore through three buildings under bomb threat, two of which actually exploded, looking for a man you are 'just friends' with. Take your time, we have all day." The man looked entirely too pleased with himself.

"Reeve?"

"Yes?"

"I don't say this often."

"Hmmm?"

"Fuck you." He flopped back onto the grass, throwing his arm over his eyes and ignoring the sound of his friends laughter.

* * *

He shouldn't have been surprised.

Cid had called him on it. Cloud had called him on it—though, to be fair, he'd run a company car into a park bench when the swordsman had pointed out Rude exiting the gym still in a sleeveless t shirt, so there was an eyewitness on that one. Tifa had called him on it. Rude's own mother…but then, mothers were psychic.

Still, he'd thought Reeve scatterbrained enough to not catch on.

He had few enough friends that he treasured each and every one of them, and his, well, more-than-friendly feelings toward Rude were something he'd like to keep secret.

Except that everyone knew about it. Everyone but Rude. Grumbling, he turned off the water and dried his hair as much as possible, and dressed quickly to go to the hospital. He'd just taken the fastest shower in history, according to the digital clock on the countertop. He gave his hair a quick comb and one more towel squeeze and was out the door.

He stopped for coffee, grabbing an extra for Rude and ignoring the 'No Food and Drinks' sign outside the lab. They knew him here. Apparently they also knew Reno, who sat slurping on some frozen concoction.

"How is he?"

"In radiology. Hurting, but okay, looks like. That mine?"

"No, his. Reeve said he's up for a puncture, it's good for the headache that comes with it." Reno looked disappointed. As well he should; Moka's made the best coffee in Edge. Too bad, he could buy his own.

Besides, Reno on even more coffee would be the death of all of them. "Look, why don't you head home? You and Cloud put in a pretty hard day."

"You sure, man? Not like you didn't."

"I took a break." Not untrue. Exactly. Coffee and a shower were a break.

"Thanks, yo. I could seriously handle some pizza and beer or something. Bath, at least. Call if you need anything, right?"

"Of course."

Vincent waited until he heard the automatic doors hiss open. The sight that greeted him made his heart scrape under his ribs. Rude, bandaged, bleeding. Even if it weren't serious, it was still _Rude_.

Oh, he had it bad, all right. He hid his reaction in a gulp of coffee. But when his friend asked him to call, when he next needed tests, he had no response. The fact that someone wanted to be here for him, and Rude, no less.

He had no words. Thank Gaia, he also had no need for them, with this man.

"Do you have someone to stay with you? Through the weekend would be best." the doctor asked.

"Of course he does," Vincent replied, before he could stop himself.

"I'll be back with the discharge papers in a few minutes then." It would be a minimum of thirty.

Bombs had exploded, taking buildings with them. Taking also the veneer of indifference he had built around himself. He reached over and touched Rude's forehead as he dozed. "Hmmmm?"

"Checking your bandage."

"Okay."

What a crock of shit, to quote Nannan. In for the whole gil, it seemed. The doctor came back, Rude signed the papers, and he drove them both back to Rude's apartment.

It was going to be one hell of a long weekend.


End file.
